My kids love fruit snacks and roll ups, but most are so full of crap, that I don’t like to buy them. So, in trying to use up my cherries, I decided to give fruit leather a try. It was pretty easy to put together, it was just the time in the oven to dry it out. It would be a lot faster with a food dehydrator, but I don’t have one right now. I’m working on figuring out how to use other fruits to make this in the future. The original recipe I found just used cherries and also had sugar, but since I didn’t want to use sugar, I decided to use some applesauce I had in the freezer to add some more sweetness. Although, honestly, the cherries I got were sweet enough, they probably wouldn’t need sugar. If you use tart cherries, you will probably want to add sugar for sweetness, but you could probably substitute honey to give it a more natural sweetness.
Cherry Apple Fruit Leather
Original recipes here and here
What you need:
4 cups cherries, stems and pits removed (I used a whole bag, which was about 2 1/4 lbs of cherries)
1/2 cup Homemade Applesauce (alternatively, you could core, peel, slice, and chop an apple or 2 to cook with the cherries)
1/4 cup water
1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar or honey, depending on your desired level of sweetness
How to make it:
Preheat oven to 170 F, or the lowest setting your oven will go. For me, this was 200 F.
Place cherries (and chopped apples) in a large pot with the water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until fruit starts to break down, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a blender to puree well, then return to the pot. Or, keep in the pot and use an immersion blender to puree fruit.
Add applesauce and/or the sugar or honey, and stir well. Simmer over low heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens.
Line a jelly roll pan or baking sheet with raised sides with parchment paper, plastic wrap, or a silicone baking mat (I used plastic wrap). Depending on the size of your pan, you may need to use 2.
Spread the fruit mixture as thinly and evenly as possible. The thicker it is, the longer it will take to dry out. (Note: in the picture below, I also have a pan of whole cherries that I was attempting to dry out as well. They have taken much longer because I left them whole.)
Place pan(s) in the preheated oven. If using 2 pans, be sure to rotate every hour. Let sit in the low heat oven for 3-6 hours, or until fruit mixture is just slightly tacky. Remove and allow to cool.
Cut the fruit leather into smaller pieces, as desired. I used a pizza cutter to make a cut in the middle lengthwise, then cut into 1″ strips. The pizza cutter cut the plastic wrap as well, so I kept it on to help prevent the roll from sticking to itself. I used twist ties to hold the rolls together, you could also use string. Store in an airtight container, and it should be good for a few weeks.
My Gems of Parenting 
One Response to “Cherry Apple Fruit Leather”